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vSphere High Performance Cookbook

Cookbook

Prasenjit SarkarJuly 2013

A cookbook is the ideal way to learn a tool as complex as vSphere. Through experiencing the real-world recipes in this tutorial you’ll gain deep insight into vSphere’s unique attributes and reach a high level of proficiency.

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Who This Book Is For

The book is primarily written for technical professionals with system administration skills and some VMware experience who wish to learn about advanced optimization and the configuration features and functions for vSphere 5.1.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: CPU Performance Design

Introduction

Critical performance consideration – VMM scheduler

CPU scheduler – processor topology/cache aware

Ready time – warning sign

Hyperthreaded core sharing

Spotting CPU overcommitment

Fighting guest CPU saturation in SMP VMs

Controlling CPU resources using resource settings

What is most important to monitor in CPU performance

CPU performance best practices

Chapter 2: Memory Performance Design

Introduction

Virtual memory reclamation techniques

Monitoring host-swapping activity

Monitoring host-ballooning activity

Keeping memory free for VMkernel

Key memory performance metrics to monitor

What metrics not to use

Identifying when memory is the problem

Analyzing host and VM memory

Memory performance best practices

Chapter 3: Networking Performance Design

Introduction

Designing a network for load balancing and failover for vSphere Standard Switch

Designing a network for load balancing and failover for vSphere Distributed Switch

What to know when offloading checksum

Selecting the correct virtual network adapter

Improving performance through VMDirectPath I/O

Improving performance through NetQueue

Improving network performance using the SplitRx mode for multicast traffic

Designing a multi-NIC vMotion

Improving network performance using network I/O control

Monitoring network capacity and performance matrix

Chapter 4: DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design

Introduction

Using DRS algorithm guidelines

Using resource pool guidelines

Avoiding using resource pool as folder structure

Choosing the best SIOC latency threshold

Using storage capability and profile driven storage

Anti-affinity rules in the SDRS cluster

Avoiding the use of SDRS I/O Metric and array-based automatic tiering together

Using VMware SIOC and array-based automatic tiering together

Chapter 5: vSphere Cluster Design

Introduction

Trade-off factors while designing scale up and scale out clusters

Using VM Monitoring

vSphere Fault Tolerance design and its impact

DPM and its impact

Choosing the reserved cluster failover capacity

Rightly choosing the vSphere HA cluster size

Chapter 6: Storage Performance Design

Introduction

Designing the host for a highly available and high-performing storage

Designing a highly available and high-performance iSCSI SAN

Designing a highly available and high-performing FC storage

Performance impact of queuing on the storage array and host

Factors that affect storage performance

Using VAAI to boost storage performance

Selecting the right VM disk type

Monitoring command queuing

Identifying a severely overloaded storage

Chapter 7: Designing vCenter and vCenter Database for Best Performance

In Detail

VMware vSphere is the key virtualization technology in today’s market. vSphere is a complex tool and incorrect design and deployment can create performance-related problems. vSphere High Performance Cookbook is focused on solving those problems as well as providing best practices and performance-enhancing techniques.

vSphere High Performance Cookbook offers a comprehensive understanding of the different components of vSphere and the interaction of these components with the physical layer which includes the CPU, memory, network, and storage. If you want to improve or troubleshoot vSphere performance then this book is for you!

vSphere High Performance Cookbook will teach you how to tune and grow a VMware vSphere 5 infrastructure. This book focuses on tuning, optimizing, and scaling the infrastructure using the vSphere Client graphical user interface. This book will enable the reader with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to build and run a high-performing VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure.

You will learn how to configure and manage ESXi CPU, memory, networking, and storage for sophisticated, enterprise-scale environments. You will also learn how to manage changes to the vSphere environment and optimize the performance of all vSphere components.

By the end of this book you will be able to identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot operational faults and critical performance issues in vSphere.

Authors

Prasenjit Sarkar

Prasenjit Sarkar (@stretchcloud) is a senior member of technical staff at VMware Service Provider Cloud R&D, where he provides architectural oversight and technical guidance for designing, implementing, and testing VMware's Cloud datacenters. He is an author, R&D guy, and a blogger focusing on virtualization, Cloud computing, storage, networking, and other enterprise technologies. He has more than 10 years of expert knowledge in R&D, professional services, alliances, solution engineering, consulting, and technical sales with expertise in architecting and deploying virtualization solutions and rolling out new technologies and solution initiatives. His primary focus is on VMware vSphere Infrastructure and Public Cloud using VMware vCloud Suite. His aim is to own the entire life cycle of a VMware based IaaS (SDDC), especially vSphere, vCloud Director, vShield Manager, and vCenter Operations. He was one of the VMware vExperts of 2012 and is well known for his acclaimed virtualization blog http://stretch-cloud.info. He holds certifications from VMware, Cisco, Citrix, Red Hat, Microsoft, IBM, HP, and Exin. Prior to joining VMware, he served other fine organizations (such as Capgemini, HP, and GE) as a solution architect and infrastructure architect.

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